June 30, 2014

On the jobs front, it feels to many Americans that the recession never ended. One of the misleading headlines from last month’s employment report was that all the jobs lost during the recession have finally been won back.

Well, not really.

According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS), in 2007 on the eve of the recession, there were 146.6 million Americans working. Today, there are 145.8 million Americans in jobs. So nearly 7 years later, we are still 800,000 jobs below the previous peak. That’s some jobs recovery.

But the missing jobs in this economic recovery are much higher than that. A new analysis of the labor force numbers by Heritage Foundation economists places the real jobs deficit in America closer to 5.5 million, even after accounting for changes in population and demographics.

Shockingly, when you jack up taxes and flood the economy with new regulations, employment and growth suffer. Bad luck, I guess.

And flood the country with illegals who will take sub-minimum wage jobs and accept cash under the table. Oh, and raising the minimum wage but not enforcing the labor laws. Hey employers, you have to pay legal Americans $15.00 and hour but we will look the other way if you pay an illegal worker less with no benefits. Is it racist to assume illegals do not need a livable wage?

This isn't just the case in the US. Look at Europe, and the UK. In a backlash against "unregulated capitalism" that was held (wrongly) to be cause of 2008 (when it was more to do with government policy and central banking), we have had a massive increase in financial regulation, for example. This explains why the recovery, despite the money printing, has been so shallow. Unemployment rates in parts of the eurozone are appalling (double-digit percentages among young people). The UK is relatively ok (I stress the word "relatively") and in part, that is due to how previous governments limited the regulatory creep from the EU. But it is getting worse.

It is fashionable in the EU, and, sad to say, the US, to blame immigration for some of this, but that is to commit the lump of labour fallacy which is just a form of protectionism. There is no fixed quantity of work to be performed. In an entrepreneurial, expanding economy, having lots of motivated, hardworking immigrants is a blessing. The problem is when welfare and taxes undermine incentives.

The jobs have gone to illegal aliens who will work cheaper and better than many citizens.

So when black Americans lament their huge unemployment rate, they can remember those jobs went to Central Americans (and many of them pay well over minimum wage, especially construction jobs). But it is not just that, there are plenty of immigrants overstaying visas for Eastern Europe and India grabbing jobs paying well over minimum wage.

Lemme guess: Most of the jobs -- especially better paying jobs -- that did get created were not in the socialist paradise states, but in those backward redneck RTW gun-clinger places like....oh...say Texas.

Throughout history, poverty is the normal condition of man. Advances which permit this norm to be exceeded — here and there, now and then — are the work of an extremely small minority, frequently despised, often condemned, and almost always opposed by all right-thinking people. Whenever this tiny minority is kept from creating, or (as sometimes happens) is driven out of a society, the people then slip back into abject poverty.

The idea that a functioning society is the work of an "extremely small minority, frequently despised, often condemned, and almost always opposed by all right-thinking people" is so self-evidently preposterous that there must be a psychological explanation for why people want to believe it regardless.

"Advances", "functioning", "society". You seem to be under the belief that these words have distinct, fixed meanings. Of course words are flexible in their meaning and mean what they want them to mean. So, in this case "advances" and "functioning" are identical because then they can point and laugh at your preposterous ideas. Self-evidently.

Haven't you gotten with the Newspeak program yet? Heinlein speaks in dog whistle tones that only racist, fascist right wingers hear.

InstaPundit is a participant in the Amazon Services LLC Associates Program, an affiliate advertising program designed to provide a means for sites to earn advertising fees by advertising and linking to Amazon.com.